Not His Time
by Moiya Hatake
Summary: Oneshot - The smiles and laughter and yelling and determination and love and understanding and playfulness and energy...the Will of Fire had been extinguished. - Naruto/Kakashi, non-yaoi


**Not His Time**

Had this in my head for a while and wanted to force something out since I'm having writers block problems.

Characters: Kakashi, Naruto (not yaoi, so sorry)

Warnings: character death, angst and really bad writing, total rubbish

* * *

He couldn't hear.

A loud roaring had blocked out the battle, the shouting, the justu's threatening to bring the entire mountain down upon them.

The rush of blood and adrenaline and fear and fear and fear....."Naruto!"

So far away...too late...too far...too late...

He rushed forward, dodging and weaving, bypassing the enemy.

So many. The same. This man who'd taken his most precious person.

But they weren't his target and there wasn't time.

No time to fight. To pray. To breath. To stop. To think. To regret.

Just to follow instinctively the path forged by his comrades.

The wood bursting from the hard, dry earth. Fighting, guiding, protecting.

Wind biting at his exposed arms and face. Attacking, cutting, maiming.

A barrage of weapons slicing the air around him. Stabbing, stopping, blocking.

And the sand....everywhere....it was alive. Flying, trapping, breaking, killing.

The end. The beginning. The everything. Surrounded him. Smothered him.

This epic battle of Wind and Fire and Clouds.

Not his goal. Not his target. Not his fight.

Only one thing, one person, mattered.

_Find him. Protect him. Bring him home._

Kakashi stumbled, landing hard on his knees, pulling the limp shoulder back towards him.

Lifeless blue eyes stared up into nothing.

He tore open the orange-black jacket, pressing his ear to the teens chest, choking back the ache tearing at his throat, burning his eyes.

No heart. No lungs. No life.

He'd failed. Again. The soul was taken with the Kyuubi and nothing remained.

The smiles and laughter and yelling and determination and love and understanding and playfulness and energy........the Will of Fire had been extinguished.

Stolen. Ripped away.

Kakashi lifted his head, arms wrapped protectively around the lifeless blonde. His student. His friend. His sensei's son. His family.

The only family he had left in the world.

Sakumo.

Minato.

Jiraiya.

Naruto.

The world slowed, shifted, moved in tiny increments around him, his eyes blindly searched the blurred forms of his comrades.

Overwhelmed. Lost. Panicked. Being swallowed up by the darkness.

No sound. No answer. No hope.

Just a vacuum that sucked everything away, including his breath.

Dying.

Dying.

Dying.

Mismatched eyes locked onto a head of red hair and a fiery rage that terrified even allies.

Naruto's equal in every way.

Heart.

Soul.

Life.

His life... their life....the same....._He is not dead!_

Eyes wide, he tugged his sweat soaked hitai-ate off and laid it in a pale hand.

_Not dead. Not yet._

Tears dripped onto whiskered cheeks and slipped into blonde strands, a kiss pressed against still warm skin.

* * *

A soft voice whispered....like a breeze...rustling in the leaves....."Naruto..."

"Naruto." a strong hand pressed firmly against his chest.

Familiar blue eyes smiled in the mist.

A blur of red waved in the non-existent wind.

"It's not your time." Two voices overlapping and replaying like a broken record that faded even as the red and blue sharpened into faces and forms and smiles.

His heart did a dance.

He reached out, longing, wanting, needing to touch them just as the firm hand gave him a shove back, "It's not your time son."

Warm, comforting, forceful.

And then they were fading away into the mist as gently as they had appeared and the bright world of between, full of endings and beginnings, dissolved around the blue and the red and the silver.

Naruto sucked in all the air his lungs could hold and coughed, gasping for more, trying to remember, to breath, to live.

To live.

Not die.

_I'm not dead._

He blinked, turning his head to find the tickling sensation against his face was silver like the blur in his dream.

"Kaka.....sensei....."

He couldn't hear his own voice.

A loud roaring had blocked out the battle, the shouting, the justu's threatening to bring the entire mountain down upon them.

The rush of blood and adrenaline and fear and fear and fear....."Kakashi!"

Cold lifeless eyes stared into nothing. Past the whiskered cheeks. Past bright blue eyes.

And he remembered the faces, familiar and blurred by the mist, in that blue and red and silver world of between, full of endings and beginnings.

And he understood.

It wasn't his time.


End file.
